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COMPANY NEWS; JAPAN'S PUSH INTO AUTO PARTS

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The Tokai Rika Company, another Japanese auto parts maker that has recently migrated to America, is trying to persuade the Ford Motor Company to buy motor mounts from its new plant in Livonia, Mich.

Neaton Auto Products Manufacturing Inc., a Japanese company that makes steering wheels at a two-year-old plant in Eaton, Ohio, is seeking orders from the General Motors Corporation, Ford and Chrysler.

The worst fears of American auto parts makers seem to be coming true. Japanese parts makers originally set up shop in the United States to supply the Japanese car makers operating here. Now they are going after G.M., Chrysler and Ford as well. If they are successful, the American auto parts industry, with nearly $60 billion in annual revenues and one million employees, could be squeezed out.

By the early 1990's, more than 40 percent of the cars sold in the United States will probably be Japanese, either imports or the 1.5 million vehicles that the Japanese auto makers will be assembling here. That means the ultimate survival of many American manufacturers of auto parts could depend on whether they can sell to the Japanese car makers, while holding on to their traditional customers: the Big Three.

So far, the American companies' efforts to sell components to Japanese car makers, either at their plants back home or here, have not been very successful.

Despite years of trying to crack the Japanese market, American parts makers exported about $230 million worth of components to Japan last year. That compared with the $2.5 billion worth of parts that American auto makers imported from Japan. And the Japanese car companies with plants in the United States have been getting more than 50 percent of the parts they need from home, running up an import bill of $4 billion in 1986.

Now American car makers are showing willingness to deal with Japanese parts plants here. Although Ford is the only company actually buying parts from these plants, G.M. and Chrysler executives indicate that they will, too.

Echoing his counterparts at G.M. and Ford, David Platt, Chrysler's vice president of procurement, said, ''Quality, cost and delivery speed are the real issues, not nationality.'' Semiconductor Industry Parallel

That is not how some American businessmen and members of Congress see it. They liken the struggle taking shape in auto parts to the early stages of the Japanese-American competition for domination of the semiconductor industry, where the Japanese now have the upper hand.

They view the American auto parts industry - with its 2,300 companies ranging from big battery and brake producers to small, family-owned gasket makers - as a cornerstone of American manufacturing. Lately, that view has made auto parts one of the hot topics in trade talks.

The Japanese also see the American market as a battlefield. ''A big competition will be created between domestic and Japanese parts suppliers, and the winners will survive,'' said Mychio Ohiwa, the president of Nippondenso's new radiator, air-conditioner and heater plant in Battle Creek. Japanese Show Reluctance

The problem for the American parts industry, in a nutshell, is that the Big Three auto companies in the United States are much more willing to buy from the Japanese than the Japanese are from the Americans.

The ITT Corporation is a case in point. After the Nissan Motor Company, the Honda Motor Company and the Toyota Motor Corporation decided to build cars in the United States, ITT was eager to make the fuel and hydraulic lines for their cars. But try as they might, executives of ITT's Higbie Manufacturing Company subsidiary found the Japanese would not seriously consider an American supplier.

In frustration, Higbie finally turned to Sanoh, a licensee in Japan, and formed a joint venture that is now selling to the Japanese the same tubing that Higbie could not sell to them on its own. ''It boils down to a paper operation, but it got us the business,'' said Ralph Reins, president of ITT's automotive division. Fear of Japanese Penetration

Even some American parts makers that have managed to sell to the Japanese auto plants in the United States worry that their good fortune will not last. One is John Reiss, group vice president for the Denver-based Gates Rubber Company and the chairman of the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association, a trade group.

Mr. Reiss said Gates was a major supplier of belts and engine hoses to the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn., and to Honda's Marysville, Ohio, facility, mainly because these bulky items are too costly to ship from Japan. But he warned in Congressional testimony: ''So far, none of the suppliers in Japan competitive with Gates have built a plant in this country. This factor, combined with the shipping costs, may be the reason for our early success.''

Fewer than 30 Japanese parts makers have operations in the United States. But by the end of the decade 300 will be here, according to American and Japanese estimates.

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One reason for this growth is that the Japanese auto makers, who are expanding production in the United States, want their suppliers close by. The falling value of the dollar against the yen, which has made imports from Japan more expensive, is also drawing them. Big Three an Attractive Target

But the prospect of becoming major suppliers of G.M., Ford and Chrysler is clearly a factor in the move to the United States.

Nippondenso's Michigan plant sells radiators and heaters for Hondas coming off the Marysville line, and Toyotas made in Fremont, Calif., in a joint venture of Toyota and G.M.

But even with no Big Three orders, Nippondenso is doubling the plant's floor space and soon its 400-employee work force will grow to 1,300, Mr. Ohiwa said.

The American market is especially alluring to Japanese parts makers because they are suffering from production overcapacity in Japan. Their strategy to cope is twofold. United States Key to Strategy

First, they are flooding the United States with exported parts for their own auto plants and those of the Big Three. Japanese exports of auto parts soared 72 percent, to $6.5 billion, last year, from $3.77 billion in 1984. During the same period, American parts exports to Japan remained almost unchanged at a minuscule $220 million to $230 million annually.

The other step is transferring parts production to the United States - a move that Japanese officials saw as necessary, given rising protectionist sentiments in Washington and the potential of the American market. Japanese Plants Welcomed

In many cases, Japanese parts companies are coming to the United States with considerable financial help from state and municipal governments eager to have the new jobs for their constituents. Illinois, for example, is granting a $2 million low-interest loan to the Mitsubishi Belting Company for a belt and hose plant in Ottawa, Ill. And the city contributed the plant's 30-acre site.

Despite such support, the parts plants that the Japanese are building in the United States are generating new trade frictions.

Members of Congress from states where American auto-parts companies are concentrated had already been angry that Japan would not import more American parts. Now they are even more upset that the Japanese auto companies that have set up shop in the United States are not using American companies as their major suppliers. New Pressure on Japanese

In an attempt to prevent auto parts from becoming an explosive trade issue, top executives from Nissan, Honda and Toyota assured Congress in late March that they were stepping up purchases from American parts makers. But repeating an often-stated Japanese complaint, one of the executives argued that American-made parts were overpriced, of poor quality and delivered too slowly.

Nonetheless, the trade pressures are already prompting the Japanese assemblers at least to consider giving American suppliers more business.

Late last month, Bruce K. Bowden, marketing vice president of Stant Inc. of Connersville, Ind., told a Congressional subcommittee that Japanese auto companies had resisted buying Stant's gasoline and radiator caps. ''A week afterward we got a call from a Japanese auto assembler who had had no interest in buying from us before,'' Mr. Bowden said. Weaker Dollar Prompts Switch

The falling value of the dollar is also prompting some Japanese assemblers to switch to American-made parts. If the dollar stays down, Nissan by 1990 will increase to 60 percent the portion of parts purchased from American companies for its Smyrna plant, according to Marvin T. Runyon, president of Nissan U.S.A. Currently, local content is 35 percent. Many American suppliers are also revamping their manufacturing procedures, generally adopting Japanese practices in the scramble for business.

Johnson Controls Inc., a Milwaukee-based company, for example, has become the exclusive supplier of seats for the Nissan cars made in Tennessee and the Toyotas coming off the assembly line in California.

Johnson got the contracts by building plants near Smyrna and Fremont that are dedicated to just-in-time delivery, which means the seats arrive an hour or two before they are installed. Johnson engineers also designed and tested the seats - a cost that their American customers had traditionally borne.

Some American parts makers are dealing with the Japanese competition by joining their rivals in joint ventures. The most recent include a brake plant going up in Elizabethtown, Ky., which will be owned by G.M.'s Delco division and the Akebono Brake Industry Company.

A version of this article appears in print on May 1, 1987, on Page D00001 of the National edition with the headline: COMPANY NEWS; JAPAN'S PUSH INTO AUTO PARTS. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe